


Wing(wo)man

by AraSigyrn



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Genderswap, Other, mention of sexual assault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-12
Updated: 2012-02-12
Packaged: 2017-10-31 01:07:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/338233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AraSigyrn/pseuds/AraSigyrn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock and Molly(Matt)'s relationship if the genders had been reversed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wing(wo)man

Sherlock would never verbally acknowledge it but having Joan at her side makes using Barts' facilities a thousand times easier. Joan is pleasant, polite, engaging and can kill a man twice her size with both arms and a leg broken. Having Joan in the room lets Sherlock sink into her work without having to keep half an ear on Matt's breathing.  
  
Matt Hooper is the mortician, a young, over-eager man with a chronic case of social phobia. He has less significant social contacts than Sherlock herself, for god's sake! Everyone who encounters Matt comes away with the impression that he is a nice boy but not the sort that you want to spend a prolonged period of time with. He is physically unthreatening. Even the labratory assistants are not afraid of him.  
  
Sherlock Holmes fears no man, of course, and her grasp of social niceties is eclectic at best. She's lost every other friend she ever had through a combination of neglect and acid-tongued commentary.  
  
Nothing in her repertoire works on Matt and Sherlock can't go more than a few seconds in his presence without being aware that Matt isn't listening to a word she says. Matt never stops looking at her but almost never at her face. He never lets a conversation end without a minimum of three attempts to ask her out.  
  
Sherlock has insulted him, threatened him and tried unsuccessfully to ignore him. Nothing works.  
  
Matt just blunders on, perpetually certain that the next time he asks Sherlock will come for a drink or a meal or maybe just a shag in one of the lecture rooms?   
  
Last Halloween, Matt offered her vodka. Sherlock refused to touch the stuff and Matt became increasingly inebriated as she struggled to run her tests. When the last of the day staff were gone Sherlock was left to wrestle the perpetual question of whether it was better to risk being alone with Matt in order to complete the tests or return another day. Matt had bumped into the table, rendering the question moot, and leaned into her personal space. Apparently oblivious of Sherlock's less than subtle attempts to move away, he asked if she wanted to fuck on a mortuary slab "because it would be all seasonal, like and I always figured you were into the kinky stuff."  
  
Sherlock hit him in seven precisely judged points and left him curled into the foetal position, whimpering. Then she locked the door and shut off the lights behind her. She considers it evidence of nigh on superhuman self-control.  
  
It enrages her that everyone who heard that story became angry with her. She had overreacted, Matt was incapable of harming a fly and threaded through every comment was the unspoken assumption that somehow Matt's long-running infatuation _excused_ him. Some truly stupid individuals insisted that the incident was 'cute'.  
  
The assumption apparently had been that Sherlock should sleep with Matt to make up for being so 'mean' to him.  
  
Matt had apologised profusely as soon as he was sober but Sherlock had never forgotten that night and she'd never been able to entirely quell the jump in her heart-rate when she looked up from her slides to discover that she and Matt were alone in the lab. It is pathetic, irrational and _stupid_ but Sherlock's subconscious refuses to be bludgeoned into submission.  
  
She had contemplated simply not returning to Barts but the only thing worse than the crawling awareness of Matt's presence was the thought of being driven away like a swooning damsel. She gritted her teeth and tried to minimize her contact with Matt. She'd gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure he didn't learn of her search for a flatmate and been on the verge of despair when Mike brought her Joan.  
  
Joan is such a small modest thing that Sherlock almost overlooked her entirely. Then she had held out her phone and Sherlock had read her history in the details and the rest, to overburden the cliché still further, is history.  
  
Now as Sherlock peers at her slides, she can hear Joan chatting with Matt. The conversation is light and Matt laughs at one of Joan's jokes, half his attention on Sherlock. He doesn't come any closer because Joan - small modest Joan who is so easily overlooked – has put herself solidly between them.   
  
Joan positioned perfectly on the fringe of Sherlock's personal space, far enough removed that she doesn't distract but close enough that Sherlock can relax. It's a masterful piece of deduction, further proof that Joan is coming along nicely. She's smiling, affable and utterly immovable.   
  
Sherlock smiles into her microscope and lets the work consume her entire attention


End file.
